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Business Finance

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Please reply following 2 different posts, provide your own opinion and cited your sources. Only 1 page (or less) for each reply post. Use simple language to state your view and position.

First post:

Productivity of a company is the ratio of outputs divided by the inputs, where outputs are goods and services, and inputs are resources, such as labor hours and capital. The operation’s manager job is to improve productivity by either reducing inputs while keeping output constant, or by increasing output while keeping inputs constant (Heizer, Munson, & Render, 2017, p. 13).

A highly productive company that I would like to discuss is Amazon.

The secret to Amazon’s massive success in e-commerce is its complex logistics system and efficient supply chain management that promises a two-day free shipping for its Prime customers and free two-hour “Prime Now” delivery in certain cities on more than 25,000 qualified items (Coren, Gershgorn, Griswold, Kessler, & Murphy, 2017).

Amazon’s delivery infrastructure includes more than 180 warehouses, 28 sorting centers, 59 local package delivery stations, and 65 hubs for its two-hour Prime Now deliveries. It is estimated that 44% of the US population lives within 20 miles of an Amazon warehouse or delivery station (Coren et al., 2017).

Amazon’s employees that work inside fulfillment centers are demanded to be highly productive and tardiness is counted against them. One of the reasons that helped Amazon become a leader in designing efficient processes and getting things done fast is the way it organizes its warehouses for Prime Now (Two hour delivery service). Instead of grouping all units of the same item together, they are scattered throughout different shelves, which reduces the time it takes for their packing staff to walk around and collect all diverse items that a customer has ordered (Boyes, 2017). Another interesting thing that boosts the productivity of Prime Now is that every item is tracked by the computer system, and workers are directed to the closest location to minimize the required walking time that employees need to collect customers’ items (Boyes, 2017).

Amazon’s need for efficiency has also made the company purchase a robotics system for warehouses. The motorized robots move in a grid to retrieve shelves from which humans pick items that people have ordered. Amazon has deployed about 100,000 of them in 25 fulfillment centers worldwide (Coren et al., 2017). In 2015, that robotics system was rebranded as Amazon Robotics, and the robots starting picking and packing without needing any human assistance, enabling Amazon to complete warehouse activities super-fast (Leblanc, 2018).

Another major indicator that Amazon is well ahead in leveraging of all the latest supply chain technologies is developing the drone-based delivery system that delivers products under five pounds in locations within 10 miles of Amazon’s fulfillment centers within just 30 minutes or less (Leblanc, 2018).

Finally, Amazon’s huge economies of scale and a bundle of industry-leading supply chain strategies, Amazon has been able to keep its overall per unit supply cost to a bare minimum and create a significant business value for the company as a whole (Leblanc, 2018).

Second post:

I have admired Apple Inc. for their innovative products and their desired of excellence.The company has manage to come up with new products every year, which make the company the leader in mobile technology.This can only be achieved if the company has a strategy to maintain high productivity and top quality at every level.The following are the areas in management that make apple’s productivity among the best in the technological companies (Rowland, 2019):

  • Design of Goods and Services. For example, the development and production of Macs involve a Senior VP for Mac Hardware Engineering and a VP for Mac Software Engineering. The system of interactions ensures that the outputs in this operational area are successful in making Apple excel in the design of its technological products.
  • Quality Management. Apple Inc.’s Senior VP for Operations coordinates with eight other Senior VPs to ensure compliance with the company’s quality standards. The company is known for high quality standards that permeate different areas of the business, including product design and development, retail, marketing, online sales, industrial design, and human resource management.
  • Process and Capacity Design. Apple’s human resource management strategies include support to maximize workforce capacity for product development and design. For instance, suppliers are given directives for process design, as well as the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct to optimize their human resource management.
  • Location Strategy.At present, the company has hundreds of stores in more than 20 countries around the world. Despite this limited approach to seller authorization, the company is now among the most profitable in the world, and Apple Stores have the highest revenue per square foot of retail space in the United States.
  • Layout Design and Strategy. Apple’s layout design and strategy emphasize customer expectations. For example, company-owned and authorized-seller stores are spacious with minimal décor to ensure focus on Apple products.
  • Supply Chain Management. Apple’s supply chain is among the most efficient and streamlined in the world. To address this decision area of operations management, the company uses automation of processes and regular monitoring of suppliers. This monitoring evaluates supplier capacity and productivity, as well as compliance with the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct.
  • Inventory Management.Apple Inc. uses different methods of inventory management, such as the serialized method for effective tracking and control of products. The company also uses the first in, first out (FIFO) method, which ensures that most old-model units are sold before new Apple product models are released to the market.
  • Scheduling.Automation is used for scheduling activities in the supply chain and production processes. On the other hand, manual scheduling is used for individual Apple Stores and in some aspects of the company’s offices. The main aim of the firm in this decision area of operations management is to maximize the capacity utilization of facilities, equipment and human resources.
  • Maintenance. Apple Inc. addresses maintenance needs through dedicated maintenance teams. For example, the company has different maintenance teams for its various facilities. Apple’s IT teams also function as maintenance teams for the firm’s servers and other IT assets.

The following are some of the productivity criteria in Apple’s operations management (Rowland, 2019):

  • Revenue per Square Foot (productivity of Apple Stores)
  • Product Units per Time (productivity of suppliers and the supply chain)
  • Milestone per Time (productivity of employees in product development)

Finally, Apple’s characteristics above demonstrate how they can keep producing new devices every year and the manner the company can maintain high productivity throughout their departments.

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